The Kähler ceramics dynasty was established in 1839 by Joachim Christian Herman Kähler (1808-1884), who emigrated from the Duchy of Holstein to establish his workshop in Næstved in the southern part of the island of Zealand in Denmark.  The business remained in family hands through four generations until being sold to Næstved Municipality in 1974. My research on Kähler focuses on the middle decades of this dynasty, starting from the artistic foundation laid by Herman August Kähler (1846-1917) and then highlighting the contributions of the next generation of artists led by his son Herman Hans Christian Kähler (1876-1948), who ran the company from 1917 until 1940. While Herman August Kähler is rightfully the most famous member of the family, the artistic legacy of his son Herman H. C. Kähler is often overlooked and under-appreciated.

Herman A. Kähler was born in 1846 and first learned his craft as an apprentice to his father. As a young man, he expanded his knowledge of glaze painting at the nearby Holmegaard Glassworks and then traveled in Europe, taking jobs in ceramic workshops in Berlin, Strasbourg and Paris, before returning home to Næstved in 1867, full of new ideas. Five years later, in 1872, Herman Joachim Kähler retired and handed over leadership of the company to his sons Herman A. Kähler and Carl Frederik Kähler, who divided responsibility for different product lines between them. By 1875, Carl F. Kähler was no longer involved in the management of the company, which was then under the sole leadership of Herman A. Kähler until his retirement in 1917.  The year 1875 is also important in the company’s history for another reason because that is when Herman A. Kähler oversaw the construction of a new facility, Kählersbakken, which was to be the home for the family company for 100 years and still stands today in Næstved. Herman A. Kähler successfully combined the talents of artist and entrepreneur. As a ceramicist he created his own original designs and had a particular interest in glazes. He had a special interest in luster glazes and worked for years to perfect a metallic red luster, which came to be known as “Kähler Red.” The 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, where he exhibited a line completely immersed in red luster, put Kähler ceramics on the world map. 

While Herman A. Kähler left a personal artistic legacy at the family company, his greatest legacy was attracting talented artists and creating a vibrant artistic community in Næstved. The first truly artistic employee of the company was  

H.A. Brendekilde (1857-1942), who was a social realist painter and one of Denmark's leading designers, designing products for Odense Glassworks. From the time he joined the Kähler workshop in 1885, probably his greatest contribution during his 20+ year association with Herman A. Kähler was as an artistic motivator and attraction for a group of other artists. In terms of his direct contribution to the early production of the company during this era, the most important artist to mention here is Karl Hansen Reistrup (1863-1929).
 He was hired by Kähler  as a painter and modeler after leaving the Royal Danish Porcelain Factory in 1888, thus beginning a close collaboration which continued until Herman A. Kähler ‘s death in 1917. Reistrup drew and modelled designs that Kähler then turned. All figures were cast in plaster to facilitate mass production. Reistrup is also particularly well-known for his large-scale decorative friezes, often depicting animals, which adorn Kählersbakken and other prominent buildings in Denmark, including Aarhus Theatre, Copenhagen City Hall and Carlsberg Brewery. Importantly, the artistic circle that Herman A. Kähler drew around him was to have a profound impact on the next generation of the Kähler family. Not only did his daughter Sigrid (1875-1923) marry L.A. Ring, his son Herman H.C. Kähler, who was to take over the leadership of the workshop from his father in 1917 at age 41, grew up and developed as an artist in this vibrant community. Herman A. Kähler’s younger daughter, Stella Kähler (1886-1948), also grew up in this environment and became very involved in decorating Kähler ceramics; she is particularly associated with the slip decoration work introduced by her brother when he took over the factory. Stella, in turn, also married within the Kähler artistic community, marrying Jens Thirslund (1892-1942), who came to Kähler in 1913 at the invitation of a friend and stayed on to become artistic director.

By around 1910 or so, the stage was set for a transition from the first generation of artistic Kähler ceramics, in which Herman A. Kähler and Karl Hansen-Reistrup had played central roles, to a new generation. This next generation was led by Herman H.C. Kähler, who took over formal leadership of the workshop with his father’s death in 1917, but began earlier with the arrival of Svend Hammershøi (1873-1948), who was to become the most important figure from outside the family in the artistic legacy of Kähler Keramik. 
Svend Hammershøi was born in the Frederiksberg district of Copenhagen and was the younger brother of the painter, Vilhelm Hammershøi, who was a strong source of influence and inspiration for his life’s work.From an early age, Hammershøi developed an interest in ceramics and began, in 1888 at the age of 14, to decorate porcelain at Kjøbenhavns Lervarefabrik in Valby, where he worked under Thorvald Bindesbøll. After a preparatory period at the Copenhagen Technical School, Svend Hammershøi studied painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1890 to 1892. Some accounts of his association with Kähler date his first period there as a designer to as early as 1893.  He remained associated in various ways to Kähler, through three generations of family leadership, until his death in 1948. When he first came to Kähler, his primary goal was to learn the art of designing, so he stayed close to the potter's wheel. Later, when he began working exclusively for Kähler, he focused on design and left production to skilled ceramic artists, including Old Olsen and three generations of the Kähler family: Herman August, Herman H.C. and Nils Kähler. Svend Hammershøi left his mark on Kähler in another important way.  As early as the 1870s, Herman A. Kähler’s initials appeared on the bottom of some of the workshop’s output. However, in 1913, Svend Hammershøi was asked to design a stylized version of the Kähler “HAK” logo since associated with all of the workshop’s output, irrespective of the actual artist involved. 

Although over-shadowed artistically by his father and contemporaries such as Svend Hammershøi, Herman H.C. Kähler also made contributions to the company’s artistic legacy that warrant greater recognition.  Herman H.C. Kähler’s role in the workshop grew as his father aged. In 1913, Kähler was transformed into a limited company, with Herman A. Kähler responsible for overall management, his son Herman H. C.  Kähler in charge of artistic development, and Rasmus Grønholt directing sales. After Herman A. Kähler died in 1917, his son assumed overall management responsibility for the company. By the time that Herman H.C. Kähler took over the company, times and tastes had changed across Europe. Denmark was a late-comer to the Art Nouveau movement, but Herman H.C. Kähler was to become one of the most visible proponents of Danish Art Nouveau ceramics, referred to as Skønvirke. Today, Kähler is perhaps best known for the wheel-thrown, slip-decorated objects created under Herman H.C. Kähler’s artistic leadership beginning around 1908. These objects were decorated by “painting girls” using the old and difficult-to-master horn painting technique, which made  use of a hollowed cow horn with attached goose quill. The horn was filled with the slip, which was applied through the goose quill, used as a pen. As many as ten horns were used to decorate a single a vase. The first items were decorated in dark brown, blue and green with patterns in the Jugendstyle (Skønvirke), with both colors and patterns becoming lighter over time. Herman H.C. Kähler's strength was his ability to inspire and encourage skilled decorators to go beyond the current decorative techniques.  The female artists who decorated Kähler ceramics during this era labored largely in obscurity but played an important role in the workshop’s success during this period. They were given a free hand to let their imagination run free, and horn painting in particular was a great opportunity to develop a personal style. The female decorators at Kähler during this time included Herman H.C. Kähler’s sister Stella, as well as Tulle Emborg and Signe Steffensen. Signe Steffensen (1881-1935) worked as a Kähler decorator from 1907 until 1934, mastering the difficult art of horn painting. For a period she was the head woman of the decorators' workshop. Tulle Emborg (1896- 1980) developed her very own style, both in terms of horn painting and wet decorations. With great creativity she used both spoons and shaking movements to merge the colors. Her later close cooperation with her brother Herman’s son Nils Kähler resulted in pieces with strong resemblance to Kähler classical pottery, which became a great commercial success for the company. All of the workshop’s female decorators had one thing in common: despite their individual styles and talents, all their pieces were anonymous works of art with the HAK-signature on the bottom. 

The roughly 50-year period during which the Kähler workshop in Næstved was led by Herman A.  Kähler and his son Herman H.C. constitute the high point of a family enterprise that endured for more than 130 years.  With Herman A. taking over from his father Joachim Christian Herman Kähler and building Kählersbakken in 1885, a new era was launched. Over the coming decade, Herman A. Kähler built an artistic community around that workshop that put Kähler ceramics on the world map starting with the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. Among the most influential members of the Kähler artistic circles in the 1880 and 1890s were Karl Hansen-Reistrup and the painter L.A. Ring, who married Herman A. Kähler’s daughter Sigrid. Over time, this artistic circle continued to expand and evolve, with Svend Hammershøi and Jens Thirslund among the most important contributors in the next generation. Herman A. Kähler’s daughter Stella also played an important role in decorating the workshop’s wares, and she married Jens Thirslund, who later became Artistic Director. One of the most important, but least recognized, members of the Kähler ceramics dynasty was Herman A. Kähler’s son, Herman H.C. Kähler. Not only did he lead the workshop from his father’s death in 1917 to his own death in 1940, he brought new artistic direction to the workshop. In particular, he is associated with the horn-painted slipware emblematic of the Danish Art Nouveau (Skønvirke) era. Even less recognized than Herman H.C. Kähler were the artists, mostly female, who decorated this work, which only carried the “HAK” shopmark. Among the most important female artists involved in decorating Kähler Skønvirke were Stella Kähler, Signe Steffensen, and Tulle Emborg. So successful was their work that they inspired imitation by another Danish ceramic workshop— DANICO— during the 1920s. Although the Kähler workshop was first established in 1839 by Joachim Christian Herman Kähler and continued operating as a family business until 1974 under the leadership of Herman H.C. Kähler’s sons Niels and Herman J. Kähler, the years from the mid-1880s until the late 1930s represent a period of high and diverse artistry, with which the Kähler name remains associated to this day.

All shipping is by USPS insured Priority mail, and great care will be taken with packing this delicate piece. A flat rate shipping charge of $25 applies to this listing. Flat shipping rate applies only to U.S. buyers. International buyers will pay higher actual shipping costs and should inquire prior to bidding.

About the seller: I have been collecting art pottery for more than 30 years. The bulk of my collection is Danish stoneware from the 1920s into the 1970s. The bulk of my Danish collection consists of Arne Bang, Saxbo, Jais Nielsen, Nils Thorsson, Erik Hjorth, and Ejvind Nielsen. I have done extensive research on these and other artists and workshops and would be happy to share that with interested buyers. I also have substantial collections of American, French, Belgian and other 20th century northern European art pottery. Over the coming months I will be listing a wide range of pieces from my collection. Please check out my other listings and add me to your list of saved sellers to receive notification of new listings.